A prior ink-jet printer includes a service station at one end of the travel path of the printing carriage upon which the printing cartridge is mounted. The service station includes a wiper for wiping the printhead to remove contaminants, dried ink and the like from the printhead surface containing the nozzle openings. Referring now to FIGS. 1-3, there is shown a prior patent wiper 10 of the Hewlett-Packard Co., which includes a wiper beam 11 having a rectangular opening 12 for smoothly flexing when the wiper beam 11 is pushed by a print cartridge 13. Although that wiper 10 has a rectangular slot 12 sized and shaped to increase the deflection of wiper beam 11 as the printhead 14 of the print cartridge 13 is wiped by the wiper 10, there are some shortcomings about the wiper 10. Such as the concentration of stress breaking the structure of the wiper 10 would happen at the four corners of the rectangular opening 12 provided at the middle part of the wiper 10 and then areas around the four corners would crack, and it is difficult to manufacture by a model having an opening 12.
It is therefore tried by the applicant to deal with the above situation encountered by the prior art.